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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/07/18, SPi

T H E F U T U R E O F T H E WO R L D
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/07/18, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/07/18, SPi

The Future of the World

Futurology, Futurists, and the Struggle
for the Post-Cold War Imagination

JENNY ANDERSSON

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/07/18, SPi

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Jenny Andersson 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
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address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
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for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/07/18, SPi

For Liv
Maman, tu travailles vraiment sur le futur? Mais c’est quoi, en fait?
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/07/18, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/07/18, SPi

Acknowledgments

This book came not only out of my personal research but also out of the collective
efforts of the Futurepol project in Paris. I acknowledge funding from the European
Research Council through grant 283706. The ERC grant allowed for extensive
archival and documentary work. Egle Rindzeviciute, Viteszlav Sommer, Sybille
Duhautois, Pauline Prat, and Adam Freeman were a truly outstanding group of
scholars and I thank all of them for their input to this book. I hope that I have
done justice to their work in the coming pages. I particularly want to acknowledge
the invaluable help from Vita Sommer as well as from Malgorzata Mazurek, Lukas
Becht, and David Priestland on what became Chapter 7. I also want to thank two
research assistants, Kecia Fong who helped me access Lewis Mumford’s materials
at UPenn when I could not travel, and Grayson Fuller in Paris.
The book as a whole has benefited from many colleagues in different disciplines:
Erik Westholm, Marie-Laure Djelic, Michael Gordin, Dominique Pestre, Nicolas
Guilhot, Sonja Amadae, Martin Giraudeau, Benoit Pelopidas, Daniel Steinmetz
Jenkins, Mathieu Leimgruber, Mathias Schmelzer, Jennifer Light, John Hall, Paul
Edwards, Gabrielle Hecht, Stephane van Damme, Barbara Adam, Sandra Kemp,
Jakob Vogel, Paul Warde, Marc Lazar, Nicolas Delalandes, Ariane Leendertz,
Patricia Clavin, Caspar Sylvest, Or Rosenboim, Wolfgang Streeck, Robert Fishman,
Marion Fourcade, Desmond King, and Jens Beckert. Particular thanks go to Nils
Gilman and Duncan Bell for their comments on the first draft manuscript, as well
as to the Oxford editors for their enthusiasm and reactivity.
I have relied extensively on the work of librarians and archivists in many fine
institutions. Ngram views can take you a bit of the way but, thankfully, we still
have libraries and archives. I am particularly indebted to the people that I inter-
viewed and talked to during the research for the book. As these conversations
ranged from proper interviews to more informal talks, I list them here: Lars
Ingelstam and Göran Bäckstrand in Sweden, Bart van Steenbergen in the
Netherlands, Theodore Gordon in upstate New York, Anthony Judge in Brussels,
Wendell Bell in New Haven, James Dator in Paris and Honolulu, Jennifer Gidley
in Melbourne, Hugues de Jouvenel in Paris, and Jerome Glenn in Washington.
Particular thanks to Eleonora Masini, whose living room I invaded for a week
while her grandchildren carried boxes of old documents up and down the stairs,
and to Ted Gordon for the use of personal photos.
About halfway through this book, I fell very ill. As I was diagnosed, many of my
friends and colleagues became the pillars of a monumental support network.
Thanks to everyone at Sciences Po, MaxPo, and CEE and particularly Florence
Faucher, Linda Amrani, Renaud Dehousse and Laurie Boussaguet, Sarah
Gensberger, Imola Streho, Sandrine Perrot, Olivier Godechot, Allison Rovny, and
Patrick Legales. Thanks to my friends, Ann Gallagher and Frank Roselli in
Somerville, who let me use my old postdoc room while working in Cambridge
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/07/18, SPi

viii Acknowledgments

archives, and thanks to Paul Edwards and Gabrielle Hecht for an edifying dinner
conversation as I finished my archival research at Ann Arbor. Thanks also to Nina
Larriaga and Jenny Bastide and their families, and to Rana and Lars Wedin. My
sister Lina Cronebäck, Henrik, Lovisa, and Estelle and my parents have been by
my side. So has my husband Olivier Borraz, with whom I have shared some very
difficult moments but also the very happiest ones. Liv Andersson Borraz is the light
of my life, my lovely, courageous, curious, clever daughter. Vous êtes mes amours.
Merci also to Rouzbeh Parsi.
The cover image of the book shows the Future Boardgame, invented by Ted
Gordon, Olaf Helmer, and Hans Goldschmidt in 1969 for the American company
Kaiser Aluminum. The game is in Ted Gordon’s possession.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/07/18, SPi

Contents
List of Figures xiii
List of Abbreviations xv

1. Introduction 1
The Problem of the Future 1
Repertoires of Future Making: Origins of Future Expertise 4
Understanding the Spaces of Futurism: A Note on Method 8
The Structure of the Book 12

2. A New History of the Future? From Conceptual History

to Intellectual World History 14
Why Did Historians Lose Sight of the Future? 14
Revisiting Social Time 18
The Future as Global Category 20
Imagining a Post-Cold War World 26

3. The Future as Moral Imperative. Foundations of Futurism 30

The End 30
Cosmic Powers 32
Prediction as Power Over Time 35
The Future is Us 37
Mankind40
The Invention of Futurology by a Ukrainian Jew in Atlanta 43
Concluding Remarks 47

4. Futures of Liberalism. The Congress for Cultural Freedom

and Futurology as a Transnational Space 49
From the End of Ideology to Futurology: The Congress
for Cultural Freedom 49
An Open vs. Closed Future 50
A Liberal Theory of History: Daniel Bell and the End of Ideology 54
The Future of Democratic Institutions: The Ford Foundation
and the Futuribles Project 57
The Future as Synthèse and Rational Decision in the Centre de Prospective 65
Conjecture as Anti-Planning: The Surmising Forum 70
Concluding Remarks 73

5. The Future as Social Technology. Prediction and the Rise of Futurology 75

A General Theory of the Future 75
The Future as Social Technology 76
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x Contents
From the Long Range to the Long Term 82
Formalizing Expert Opinion: The Invention of Delphi 85
Substituting Passionate Opinion 90
Concluding Remarks: Traveling Delphi 96

6. Predicting the Future of American Society: From RAND

to the Commission for the Year 2000 98
The End of Ideology Thesis Revisited 98
Social Change as a Deliberately Planned Process: From Planning
to Prediction 101
A Sense of National Priority 106
Rational Social Choice 110
People Who Can Read Trends 114
Future Crash 118
Concluding Remarks 120

7. Bridging the Iron Curtain. Futurology as Dissidence and Control 122

Dreams of an Open Future 122
A New Future Horizon: The Polska 2000 Group 127
Civilization at the Crossroads and the Futurological Society
of the Prague Spring 134
In Russian the Word Future Exists Only in the Singular 139
Futures Studies as Dissidence: Mihail Botes and the Center
for Methodological Future Research in Bucharest 146
Concluding Remarks: from Futurology to Prognostika 150

8. The Future of the World. The World Futures Studies Federation

and the Future as Counter Expertise 151
Taking Future Research to the World 151
The Image 155
The Future as Radical Imagination 158
Reshaping Activism: Future Research and Social Science 161
Data-in-being165
The Anti-RAND: Uniting World Social Movements 167
Models as Micro-utopias 174
The World Plan 176
The Future Workshop 179
Concluding Remarks 181

9. The Futurists. Experts in World Futures 184

From System to Self 184
The Look Out Institution: The World Futures Studies Federation 188
I’m Off to Pyongyang to See Some Friends. Futurism after 1989 196
Man: The Fundamental Particle 198
Future Artefacts. The Constitution of Global Future Expertise 207
Concluding Remarks: The Future Factory 211
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Contents xi

10. Conclusion 213

One or Many Futures 213
The Image of the Future 217
The Problem of Foreclosure 222

Bibliography 227
Index 251
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List of Figures
2.1. Apparatus for Playing a Game Involving Forecasting of Future Events, 1969 25
3.1. Tomorrow is Already Here 37
4.1. The Future of Political Institutions, Paris 1966 74
5.1. Delphi, 1964 88
5.2. Delphi Matrix 89
5.3. Theodore Gordon and Olaf Helmer at RAND in Front of the
Future Boardgame 95
8.1. The Mankind 2000 Trinity of Possible, Desirable, and Realizable Futures 154
8.2. Future Workshop, 1984 180
9.1. Syncon. Huntsville, Alabama, 1973 206
9.2. The Global Futures Network 210
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List of Abbreviations
BNF Bibliothèque nationale de France
CdP Centre de Prospective
CFF Congress for Cultural Freedom
CRC Centre d’études et de recherches des chefs de l’entreprise
CY2000 Commission for the Year 2000
FFA Ford Foundation Archives
FFEPH Fondation française de l’étude des problèmes humains
IIASA International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
ISA International Sociological Association
MPS Mont Pelerin Society
MSH Maison des sciences de l’homme
RAC Rockefeller Archives Center
RAND Research and Development Corporation
SEDEIS Société d’études et de documentation économiques industrielles
WFSF World Futures Studies Federation
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1
Introduction

T H E P RO B L E M O F T H E F U T U R E

In a number of essays published in a book with the title Between Past and Future in
1961, Hannah Arendt wrote that Mankind had severed its links to the past, thereby
losing all hope of a human future.1 The future, cut loose from all past experiences, was
adrift in a sea of meaningless time. History was no more. Time was but a simple
prolongation of a deeply anguished present. As the realm of dreams of human
improvement, the future had no sense. This empty future was the starkest sign, to
Arendt, of a pervasive crisis of Man. In its magnanimous belief in science and technol-
ogy, humanity had replaced all eschatological and moral notions with the totalizing
idea of constant progress. In such a futuristic world, no future was possible.2
Hannah Arendt was not alone in understanding, after World War 2, the future as
a fundamental political problem. Walter Benjamin’s famous essays on history iden-
tified progress as a totalitarian force and the future as a mechanistic and oppressive
dystopia personified in the terrifying vision of an angel blowing backwards on a
storm called progress.3 Before his suicide on the Spanish border in November
1940, Benjamin handed the German manuscript of Theses on the Philosophy of
History to Arendt, and Arendt carried it in her suitcase to New York, where she
published it.4 Benjamin’s conception of the future as a totalitarian sphere would,
in her own work, translate into a set of arguments about the future as a fundamen-
tal problem for the “human condition.” After 1945, freedom was threatened by a
set of earth changing factors. The futurism born in an interwar romance with
machines, science, and technology had developed into the ideology of totalitarian-
ism, the totalizing nature of which lay precisely in its grasp on the human future.
Through the negation of the plural nature of the future, totalitarianism projected
one future that was also a non-future as the open character of the future was by
definition a threat to totalitarian power. A fundamentally hollowed out category,
the future was up for grabs, empty to be filled with new forms of meaning.5

1 Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future. Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin
classics, 1961).
2 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958, 1998),
1–6, and sections 34, 35.
3 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1968).
4 Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2004), 166–7.
5 Hannah Arendt, “Tradition and the Modern Age”, in Between Past and Future.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/07/18, SPi

2 The Future of the World

Arendt’s conception of a threatened future was central for her understanding of

the shifting nature of political power in the post-war world. Arendt was not a
futurist. But her apprehensions of the consequences of a closing down of the future
for any kind of philosophical optimism or political agency were shared in the post-
war period by an unexpected mix of intellectuals and thinkers, such as the urban
theorist Lewis Mumford and the journalist Robert Jungk, the German Marxist
Ossip Flechtheim, the Quaker couple Elise and Kenneth Boulding, and the
American economist John McHale. These thinkers would be central in the laying
of the foundations of the eclectic field of futurism.6 Futurists argued that human-
ity needed new forms of knowledge, new instruments and tools with which to
shape, alter, and ultimately salvage, future developments, and through those, the
world itself. They were deeply troubled by the spread of new forms of prediction as
part of the Cold War struggle, and with the rise of a new scientific expertise over
what was in the 1950s and 1960s referred to as the “long term.” The coming chapters
explain this category, a product of ballistic engineering and space research.7
This book lays out the history of the complex activity called futurism, futurology,
futures studies, prognostics, or, quite simply, future research. It explains that these
strands were composed of profoundly different claims about how to know and
change the future, and through that future, the world. The future that emerged
after 1945 was, I propose, a field of struggle between different conceptions of how
to control, or, radically transform, the Cold War world. An idea of the future as a
fundamentally moral category stood against the “long term” as a category of con-
trol and management. The post-war future was a terrain of both imagination and
scientist reasoning. This reflects a fundamental dividing line in the contemporary
notion of the future between conceptions of the future as coming physical reality
and as the product of law bound developments, or, as a quintessential social con-
struct, beginning in the minds and hearts of people and reachable only through a
transcendental act of love and imagination.8 These different categories ascribed
very different conceptions not only of the scope of human influence on the world,
but also to the place of human beings within that world.
There were specific reasons why the future emerged as a core problem of human
action after 1945. The post-war world was, more than any previous historical
world, marked by the idea of human influence, and with the idea of unprecedented
influence came new conceptions of consequence, reach, and responsibility. The
“long term,” post-1945, was understood not as a distant and free floating contin­
ent of time, but as a set of direct and aggregate consequences of the present, an
outcome of myriads of forms of decision and multiple forms of action, some of which
led to good futures, and some of which seemed profoundly undesirable. In addition,
predictive experimentation after 1945 turned the future into a manageable and

6 I use futurism here to denote a set of approaches to the future that came out of post-war social
science and that have no relation to the interwar revolutionary art movement.
7 Jenny Andersson, “The Great Future Debate and the Struggle for the World,” in American
Historical Review, 2012, 117 (5): 1411–31.
8 See Kenneth Boulding, The Image. Knowledge in Life and Society (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1956).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 05/07/18, SPi

Introduction 3

rationalized entity. In the social sciences, prediction had been confined to the
dustbins since the grand schemas of Condorcet and Comte, with the exception of
economics.9 But after 1945, a range of predictive experiments appeared, including
attempts to foresee the evolution of technology, the international system, human
values, and political decision making. The effect of this was that the future, which
had been discussed as a moral and philosophical category since the seventeenth
century, became an object of social science. That the future lacked physical presence
and could therefore not be the object of direct observation was a problem long
discussed in the history of probabilistic reasoning.10 But after 1945, the progress
in quantitative surveys and multivariate analysis, in computer led simulation and
modeling in a range of fields seemed to give long-term developments empirical and
observable shape. Forms of probabilism could therefore be complemented with
empirical and manipulable observations of changes both in human behavior and
the surrounding world order. The future could take on a form of presence.
This presence was highly ambiguous. In many ways, the idea that the future
could be rendered visible and hence inherently governable can be thought of, in
the historian James Scott’s terms, as part of a high modernist attempt of rational-
ization of uncharted territory.11 Futurology, from this perspective, would seem to
mark the high point of planning rationalities and attempts at active steering and
problem solving in the post-war era. The book does not contradict this, but it
argues that futurology was a highly complex project, one that in fact included not
only important attempts to control the Cold War world, but also central forms of
protest and dissent. Futurology contained both reassured notions of the stable
structures of the present, and anxious notions of unforeseen and radical changes.
As such, futurology seems to stand on the verge between high modernity and its
postulated crisis, and I put forward the argument that futurology enacted a central
debate in intellectual history on the malleability of coming time. The years between
1964 and 1973, the high point of future research, were marked by a not unique
but nevertheless historically specific understanding that the present was a far from
stable structure. Social, economic, and technological developments of modern
industrial societies posed challenges to particular conceptions of stability and con-
tinuity, as industrial societies turned into post-industrial ones. New versions of
positivism in modernization theory and behavioralism in the 1950s were attempts
to capture the nature of this present. As the belief in positivism and technocracy
faded toward the latter half of the 1960s, the question remained of how, absent
such forms of reassurance of relative predictability, the future could be addressed.
Futurology played out pervasive discourses of those decades on post-industrialism,

9 Phillip Mirowski, More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature’s Economics
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Phillip Mirowski, Machine Dreams. How Economics
Became a Cyborg Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
10 Ian Hacking, The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability,
Induction and Statistical Inference (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Ian Hacking, The
Taming of Chance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
11 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Failed
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); see also Timothy Mitchell, The Rule of Experts. Egypt,
Technopolitics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
Another random document with
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 Our visitors were really many of them very fine-looking fellows in
their long Tuareg bubus or mantles, with the red pocket on the
breast. Their naturally picturesque attitudes lent them a really regal
appearance, and they might very well have passed for proud, highly-
born nobles, when, leaning on their spears, they looked about them,
their great black eyes gleaming from the voluminous folds of their
veils. But when the distribution of presents began the glamour
disappeared, the haughty noble was gone, to be replaced by a
greedy, rapacious savage, until, his big pocket as full as it would
hold, he resumed his disdainful attitude.

OUR PALAVER AT SAKHIB’S CAMP.

All this is really very excusable. Imagine the effect in any

European country place, of the arrival of a wealthy nabob distributing
diamonds and other precious stones wherever he goes. I wager that
our own fellow-countrymen would not comport themselves in a more
worthy way than did these Tuaregs, and it must be borne in mind
that though our presents, such as pipes, small knives, bracelets and
rings, or white and coloured stuffs were of little intrinsic value, the
natives set as much store by them as we should by jewels.
Numerous as was the crowd, however, Sakhib was conspicuous
by his absence; neither did the women put in an appearance, a proof
that the Tuaregs were not quite sure of our good intentions. Only one
of the fair sex did we see, and she was a female blacksmith, who
said she was ill, and wanted the doctor to prescribe for her. Taburet
tried in vain to find out what was the matter with her, and my private
opinion is that her illness was only an excuse, that her motives in
visiting our camp were none of the best, and that she would be ready
to accept our hospitality for a night in return for a good fee.
We, however, with thoroughly British bashfulness, resisted the
blandishments of the siren, and when darkness fell all our visitors,
who had been less extortionate in their demands than Sakhaui’s
people, decided to withdraw.
Mohamed Uld Mbirikat alone remained on the beach with us, and
we talked together till far into the night. He really was a good fellow,
and it was no fault of his that we had not succeeded in seeing
Sakhib and Sakhaui, for he had put forth all his eloquence on our
behalf. His interests, moreover, are closely bound up with those of
the Igwadaren, amongst whom he lives without protection, buying
grain of them to sell it again in Timbuktu, so that any help he gave us
beyond a certain point would seriously compromise him. I gave him
a valuable present, and he in his turn presented me with a stock of
rice he owned at the village of Gungi on the islet of Autel Makhoren,
where we should be the next day.
After a quiet night we resumed our voyage, but the never-ceasing
enervating wind forced us to anchor soon, and we were presently
joined by a canoe in which was an unfortunate man in chains, a
brother of Sakhib, who had been out of his mind for five years. He is
quiet enough, they told me, when he is rendered powerless for harm
by being bound, but directly he is released he becomes furious, and
strikes and abuses every one about him. Taburet prescribed for him
as best he could, shower-baths and strait waistcoats being out of the
question in these parts. We passed the village of Agata, where lives
Hameit, a sheriff to whom we had a letter from Abiddin, and where
we saw some fifty canoes drawn up high and dry on the banks. In
the evening we halted near a little village on an islet, the chief of
which had had his arm broken by a blow from the spear of an
Igwadaren, whom he had refused to allow to carry off his store of
rice. There is no doubt that the natives on the right bank of the river
behave better than those on the left, and—which it is rather difficult
to understand—it is the negroes, that is to say the Songhay, who,
though more numerous and as well armed as their oppressors, allow
themselves to be ill-treated in this way without making any attempt at
defence. Their cowardice prevents me from feeling as much
sympathy as I otherwise should for their miserable condition.

THE VILLAGE OF GUNGI.

We started very early the next morning, but our guide got
confused, and did not know the way to Gungi. Some men in a canoe,
however, directed us, and we had to go up-stream again beyond
Agata, and get into another arm which we had passed on the left.
We then, though not without some difficulty, succeeded in reaching
the village, passing several artificial dykes, beyond which stretched
rice-fields now inundated. Gunga, a wretched little place, is peopled
by slaves taken in war by the sheriffs of Agata. Mohamed’s rice was
handed over to us, but it was all still in the husk, and it would take us
the whole of the next day to get it shelled.
During the night a Kel es Suk arrived, who, in a very important
manner, informed me that he had very serious news to
communicate. The whole of the tribes of the Sahara, he said, had
combined against the French, and were advancing upon Timbuktu.
Awellimiden, Hoggars and all the rest of them were up, and Madidu
himself was at Bamba at the head of his column. This was really too
big an invention, and the narrator overreached himself by going so
far. Without losing my sang-froid for a moment, I thanked my
informant, Father Hacquart acting as interpreter, for my visitor spoke
Arabic well, and begged him to take my best compliments to Madidu.
The old rogue then turned to the subject he really had most at heart,
and tried to make me give him a garment of some kind as a present,
but I was too deep for that, and sent him off empty-handed.
 OUR PEOPLE SHELLING OUR RICE AT GUNGI.

Directly we stopped we were inundated by visitors, all nearly as

worrying as the rain, which had been falling without ceasing since
the evening before. To begin with, on the morning of the 22nd came
messengers from Sakhaui to ask in his name for advice. The
Commandant of Timbuktu had sent him a letter announcing the
approaching arrival of Colonel de Trentinian, Governor of the French
Sudan. The Commandant ordered Sakhaui to go to Timbuktu, and
he was very much frightened. I did my best to reassure the
messenger, but I am very certain that Sakhaui does not mean to
budge. The message would, however, do us no end of harm, and
from my journal that day I perceive that I felt very indignant at the
policy pursued by our authorities in the Sudan. I find written there
—“We really are an extraordinary people, we seem to expect that the
Tuaregs will come and throw themselves into our arms of their own
accord, without our having employed any conciliatory or coercive
means to induce them to do so. But, good Heavens! if they could
send us to the Devil, from whom their marabouts tell them we come,
they would gladly do it. And really I don’t blame them, for I see well
enough what they have to lose by our presence in their land, though
I don’t quite see what they are to gain. Taking into account the
apathy with which commercial questions are treated, I do not yet
foresee the day when amends will be made for the imposts now
levied by force, by the granting of new rights of way, and the
supplying of new means of transport.”
Nor have I seen reason since to change my opinion, for to talk of
colonial questions in France is to preach in the desert. Nevertheless,
I am firmly convinced that then as now I wrote only the exact literal
truth.
It was now R’alli’s turn again. We had not seen the fellow for
some time, but I am willing to swear three times by Allah, that since
we treated him as we did at Zarhoi he had been our most faithful and
devoted adherent. He would never let us go anywhere without
preparing the way before us, so he had gone on in advance of our
barges now, and spread our fame amongst the sheriffs and other
idiots, who did not know us as he did, and who received his reports
by beating the tabala or war-drum; or, to speak with more strict
accuracy, he found the drum being beaten, and fearing that the
sound of that one instrument would lead to the beating of others, he
confiscated it at once. Then he, R’alli, having inquired what all the
noise meant, the owner of the drum replied that he was afraid the
white men were coming to take away his goods, his oxen, his sheep,
and so on. “Then,” added R’alli, with an air of extreme amiability, “to
show him he had nothing to fear, I took everything away from him.” I
began to shout at him—“And that is the way you make friends for
us!” “To give everything back when you have passed,” he went on
with a smile. If the story he told me is true, and I shouldn’t like to
swear that it was, I wouldn’t mind taking my oath that the poor sheriff
will not get all his property back. However, the unabashed R’alli
continued, “You ought to dress me now as you do your other
soldiers, for am not I now one of your troops?”
 SHERIFF’S HOUSE AT GUNGI.

I observed that I had already given him stuff enough to clothe his
whole family.
“But my bubu and breeches are dirty now!” he replied. “Well, go
and wash them, you wretch!” was the angry rejoinder. “What!” he
cried, “would you like a soldier under such a chief as you to demean
himself by such work as that?”
Sheriff Hameit, to whom I had sent Abiddin’s letter the evening
before, answered us very impolitely, declaring that his religion
forbade him to have anything to do with infidels.
I consoled myself for this fresh failure by having a chat with the
little Kunta Tahar, Mohamed’s companion, who had come on to
Gungi to see that the rice was duly handed over to us.
He told me of the death in 1890 near Saredina of Abiddin, the son
of Hamet Beckay, of whom he had been a faithful retainer when at
Gardio near Lake Debo.
 This Abiddin and his followers had come to make a pilgrimage to
the tomb of the great marabout, and also to try to win recruits against
the Toucouleurs of Massina, with whom Abiddin carried on the
struggle begun by his father. Two columns had marched forth
against them, one from Mopti, the other from Jenné, and surrounded
them. Abiddin was wounded and taken prisoner, but his faithful
Bambaras of Jenné, who had always followed his fortunes, rescued
him from the hands of the enemy. But, alas! no less than three
bullets hit the doomed man after this first escape, killing him on the
spot, and a great storm then arose which put an end to the battle,
only a few of those engaged in it escaping to tell the tale.
The wind, which was very violent and dry, whirled up such
quantities of sand that the corpse of Abiddin was buried beneath it,
and no one was ever able to discover the place where he lay, as if
Nature herself wished to protect his body from desecration and
insult.

WEAVERS AT GUNGI.
 Tornadoes play a great part in the histories of Kunta wars. Hamet
Beckay is supposed to have had the power of calling them up when
he liked, and to have by their means several times overwhelmed
armies sent to attack him, but that of Saredina came too late to save
his son.
Can it have been the story told to me by my friend the Kunta
which caused a tremendous tornado to sweep down upon us that
very evening, with thunder and lightning and torrents of rain all
complete, soaking everything and everybody on board?
Our rice shelled, put into bags, and stowed away in the hold, we
went on and anchored the next morning opposite Baruba to
breakfast there. The ancient town, the Kaaba of the Tuaregs, which
was still standing in the time of Barth, has since been destroyed, but
its site is marked by piles of rubbish such as are still characteristic of
the environs of Timbuktu, and from their vast extent prove that it was
a city of considerable importance.
The country round about is extremely picturesque. The
descendants of those who dwelt in the old city have moved a little
further down stream to a dune which is so completely surrounded
with water during inundations as to form an island. They bury their
dead beneath the shade of the thorny bush beyond their settlement.
At Baruba we saw some date trees which had reverted to the wild
state, and were very majestic looking. We visited the site of the old
town, and then anchored opposite its successor. Now that the waters
of the Niger were beginning to subside, and the island was becoming
a peninsula only, the inhabitants were losing their sense of security,
and talking of migrating to an islet in the river itself opposite their
present home. A few huts had already been put up on it, making
white spots amongst the dense green verdure.
There we received envoys from the chief named Abder Rhaman,
who brought us a letter in which we were informed that the reason
the writer did not come to see us was, that he was afraid we should
not understand each other, and bad results might ensue.
Then came a band of Kel-Owi, serfs of the Igwadaren, bringing
ten, twenty, or thirty sheep, which they informed us they meant to
give us. The number of animals seemed increasing at every
moment, and I at once feared there was some sinister intention
behind this unusual generosity. But no, I was wrong. They were
really good fellows these Kel-Owi, though the merit of their
munificence rather melts away when you examine closely into
motives. It was present for present, as of course they knew I should
not take their beasts without giving them something in exchange. I
had the greatest difficulty in making our visitors understand that our
boats were not sheep-pens, and that all I could do was to choose out
the five finest animals.

FATHER HACQUART AND HIS LITTLE

FRIEND.

All the imrads or serfs with whom I came in contact seemed to me

quiet, inoffensive folk, when one does not pick a quarrel with them, in
which they differ entirely from the Tuaregs of Algeria. They are of
much paler complexion than the nobles or Ihaggaren.
 In spite of what Abder Rhaman said in his letter, he decided to
come and see us. He was an Arma, or descendant of the old
conquerors from Morocco, with a proud, dignified bearing, and
seemed to be a good and energetic ruler.
We had a very friendly conversation with him, during which the
halt and lame, with all the sick people of the village, came to ask for
medical advice. The doctor really multiplied himself in an
extraordinary way, working miracles of healing.
During the night of the 23rd to the 24th of May we were roused by
a great commotion in the village, and prepared for every
contingency, but in the morning Abder Rhaman came to explain the
mystery, telling us that the Hoggars had made a raid on the
Igwadaren settlements. Sakhaui had sent ten men to reconnoitre,
one of whom was his brother. They had met the enemy, whose force
was superior to theirs, and had had to beat a retreat, with two of their
number wounded. Sakhaui’s brother had had his horse killed under
him.
On the rumour of the approach of the Hoggars, which had
reached Baruba, during the night, the village was deserted, every
one carrying off all the property he could, and the noise we had
heard was that made by the canoes taking over the wretched goods
and chattels of the poor people and the materials of their huts to the
point called Ansel Makkoren. They had not dared to warn us for fear
of being fired on by our sentry.
I greatly regret that I was not at Zarhoi when the news came of
the arrival of the Hoggars. We might have given Sakhaui timely aid
in repulsing them, and thus have aided to avenge the murder of
Flatters, whilst the danger he was in would very likely have driven
the Igwadaren chief into our arms.
Later, however, I had the satisfaction of hearing that the column of
Hoggars who had advanced towards Timbuktu had been surprised
and partly destroyed by the spahis of Captain Laperrine.
 LITTLE NEGROES AT EGUEDECHE.

A short march in the afternoon brought us to Eguedeche, where

we cast anchor opposite a little slave village on the very edge of the
river. At first the negroes all ran away, and when we landed we found
nothing but empty huts. Presently, however, a wail went up from
amongst the fugitives, for Father Hacquart made a sudden dash at
them, and emerged carrying a little boy of about a year old in his
arms, who screamed in terror, but was soon reassured by the
caresses of the father, and began playing with his long beard.
The little fellow’s parents were not far off, and they watched what
was going on from behind some dwarf palms, where they had taken
refuge with the rest of the villagers, and, their fears allayed, they now
came out followed by their comrades.
The large village of Eguedeche is some little distance from the
river, and is hidden behind a dune. The inhabitants, who are the
masters of the slaves in the little village near which we had
anchored, are Kuntas. They showed us the ruins of an earthen hut
which had belonged to Sidi el Amin, one of Hamet Beckay’s
brothers. The chief of Eguedeche came to meet us in person,
accompanied by one of his relations, who belonged to that part of
the tribe which was under the rule of Baba Hamet, a son of El
Beckay. I persuaded him to go back and tell his chief of our
approach, that I was the nephew of Abdul Kerim, and anxious to see
Baba Hamet and his brother Baye.
The news of the Hoggar raid was confirmed by the people here.
Though we were able to remain on pretty good terms with the
inhabitants of the left bank of the Niger, we felt that an obstinate
hostility to us was growing on the other side, and during the day of
the 25th an adventure occurred which proved that we were right.
We had to halt about 8 o’clock. The Aube was already anchored
at the base of a dune, and the Davoust was amongst the grass near
a village, the inhabitants of which had come to barter their eggs and
poultry for our glass beads. The wind had fallen, and I had already
given the signal to start, when from amongst a group of Tuaregs who
had been posted on the dune watching our boats without
approaching, a negro was sent to say they wished to speak to us.
In his hand the envoy held a red woollen coverlet which I had sent
from Rhergo to Mohamed Uld Mbirikat, and which he told me had
been taken from him partly by persuasion and partly by force by Abu,
a brother of Sakhib.
This coverlet, the messenger explained, was sent to prove that he
came from Abu, who exhorted us to keep away from the right bank
of the river, to go down stream if we liked, but to refrain from landing.
The Aube had already started, and on account of the tiresome
wind, which made us lose the best hours every day, we had very
little time to push on, so I resisted my desire to remain where I was
and see what Abu would do. I sent him an answer, however, to the
effect that I was going on, not because he ordered me to, but
because I wished to do so, as I had already made an arrangement
with his elder brother. I added, I had nothing at all to do with Abu,
and did not recognize him as having any authority whatever in the
country.
 In the evening we tried in vain to anchor near the village of
Moyadikoira, the weeds quite prevented our getting in, and we had
to content ourselves by stopping near a little island opposite to it. We
tried without success to attract the natives. They came, it is true, in
their canoes as far as the boundary of weeds and rushes, but they
would not land on our island. I was very anxious, however, to find out
what was in the wind among the Tuaregs, and also to buy some
wood for burning. In these parts, where weeds and grass often make
it impossible to land, the question of how to get fuel for cooking
purposes is often a very serious one, and we had to be very
economical with what we did succeed in obtaining. It is not that there
is not plenty of wood to be had, if there were not steam navigation
would be indeed difficult here; but in order to procure it, it is
necessary to go to the first line of dunes beyond the highest point of
the great inundations. There are plenty of gum trees there, and all
we have to do is to get the natives to cut them down, and carry the
wood to the boats. It throws out a great heat when burning.
On the 26th a canoe passed us in which were some people from
Bamba, who told us that the Tademeket Kel Burrum had met at
Dongoe with the intention of attacking us.
On hearing these tidings Sidi Hamet burst into tears, and in the
end he entreated me to let him leave us at Tosaye to go back to
Timbuktu.
Since we had passed through the Igwadaren districts, the
character of our guide had undergone a complete transformation,
which was anything but an improvement. I knew he had had a letter
from Timbuktu, but I did not know what was in it. I do know, however,
that the silly fellow is a great fool, and very jealous about his wife.
“She is such a beautiful woman,” he informed us one day, “and so
beautifully dressed. She carries the value of at least four bars of salt
on her back.” Is he afraid of the fate of the husband described by
Molière? Is his fear real or feigned? Anyhow he is, or pretends to be,
a constant prey to the greatest terrors. He who, till we reached
Kardieba, was always so gay and so bold, ready to carry out every
enterprise I entrusted to him, he, who had always expressed such
immovable confidence in the success of all our schemes of alliance
with the Awellimiden, could now only dwell on the melancholy fate
which awaited him and us: we should be murdered, he too of course,
and he should never see his dear wife again who has the value of
four bars of salt on her back, etc. I had tried by kindness and by
scolding to restore his moral tone, but it was no good, and feeling
how foolish it would be to place confidence in such a coward, who
was quite ready to deceive us if he could thus prevent us from going
further, I gave him the permission he asked for, seasoning my
compliance, however, with a few pretty severe remarks. This quieted
him for a bit, but he very soon recommenced his jeremiads on the
dangers he would incur on his way back to Timbuktu. To cut the
matter short, however, I at last forbid him ever to mention the matter
to me.
There was, however, some truth in all that Sidi Hamet said. The
natives we met grew more and more hostile. On the morning of the
27th we crossed the rocky pass known as Tinalschiden, and then
Dongoe, where rumour said we were to be attacked. We were, in
fact, followed on either bank by troops of mounted Tuaregs, some
thirty altogether, I should say, but this was not a very formidable
force, and after all they abstained from any hostile manifestation.
The wind compelled us to halt for a few minutes opposite Dongoe on
the left bank, and a horseman rode forward and hailed the Davoust. I
exchanged greetings with him, a necessary prelude to every
conversation, even if that conversation is to lead to a quarrel. I asked
him to give me the news of the country, and he told me I should get
them at Tosaye from Sala Uld Kara.
At about two o’clock we perceived in front of us two great masses
of rock. These were the Baror and Chalor mentioned by Barth, which
form land, or rather water-marks at the defile of Tosaye. A canoe at
once put out from the left bank, in which was a relation of Sala, who
came to offer his services as guide. The numbers of the Tuaregs on
the right bank now increased, and I wished to parley with them, but
our pilot prevented it. A few strokes of the oar soon brought us
opposite Sala’s town, known as Sala Koira or Tosaye. We landed.
TAKING ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS.
TOSAYE, WITH THE BAROR AND CHABAR ROCKS.
 CHAPTER IV

FROM TOSAYE TO FAFA

Tosaye is a village of sheriffs. They are as pacific and timid a set

of people as can possibly be imagined, but for all that, they gathered
on the beach on our arrival in warlike array, trying to make up for the
courage they lacked by being armed to the teeth. Each marabout
was really a walking arsenal. This made us feel inclined to laugh; but
what was a far more serious matter, was the fact that groups of
Tuaregs, who seemed to be waiting for us, had gathered behind the
village. Our guide, who had sprung ashore directly we landed, had
disappeared, and no one seemed anxious to enter into conversation
with us. I told Sidi Hamet to come down and take me to Chief Sala,
or to one of his representatives; but our political agent at first stoutly
refused to do so. We had to drag him from the boat almost by force,
and then he went up to one of the groups which appeared the least
hostile, entered a hut, and kept us waiting outside for his return for
half-an-hour.
He came at last, with a brother of Sala, bearing very bad news.
Sala by an unlucky chance had gone on a journey, and the people of
the village, fearing that we were going to fight with the Tuaregs,
would be very glad if we did not land here at all. This was succeeded
by a whole rigmarole of information—much of it contradictory, but all
alarming. A great gathering of Awellimiden, Tademeket Kuntas, etc.,
was massed at the Tosaye defile to oppose our passage, etc. Sala
himself was amongst the rest of our enemies.
What was to be done? We were in need of provisions, our reserve
stores were beginning to give out, and I wanted to lay in a stock of
grain, for who could tell what we might expect further down the river?
 I also wanted guides. Ever since we had left Timbuktu the
narrowness and difficulties of the Tosaye defile had been dinned into
our ears. Even Dr. Barth is not very reassuring in what he says about
it, for he asserts that a stone could be flung by a vigorous hand from
one bank to the other, and speaks of the probable existence of very
strong currents, perhaps even of rapids.
We were told that some twelve years ago an army of Toucouleurs
had tried to descend the Niger in canoes. They were, however,
completely annihilated at Tosaye, crushed beneath masses of rocks
which the natives rolled down on them from the top of the cliffs. Of
course I knew that allowance must be made for exaggeration, but for
all that I feared that we should be at very great disadvantage in the
narrow pass if we did have a conflict with the natives. We must
therefore put out all our diplomacy to avoid a struggle.
Without seeming to give any credence to the alarmist reports of
Sidi Hamet, or to be in the least disconcerted by them, I entered into
conversation with Sala’s brother, and very soon managed to
introduce the subject of Abdul Kerim.
I revealed my relationship to him, and as usual it produced the
anticipated effect. Sala was not aware that I was the nephew of
Barth; he must at once be told. As a mark of gratitude and a token
that I really was speaking the truth, I gave him the name of the cook
of his former leader, El Beckay. Her name was Diko.
No doubt when Barth, with his usual German precision, registered
the name of that humble but useful personage, the information did
not seem likely to be of very great importance to future generations.
He little knew the service he would render nearly half-a-century
afterwards to his pretended nephew.
With such a proof as this who could fail to believe that I really was
the nephew of my “uncle,” especially as Diko was not yet dead, but
was living at a camp in the interior? The result of my news was that
Sala had not, after all, gone on a journey, and would perhaps visit
us. His brother at once hastened to land to take the tidings to him,
his whole manner and expression completely transformed.
 He soon came back to report that Sala was not gone, but still in
the village, and when his brother had told him who I was he had
wept, for he saw in my arrival the fulfilment of a prophecy made by
his leader.
The fact was, that when Barth, accompanied by El Beckay,
arrived at Tosaye, the German explorer had no doubt been in more
danger than at any other time during his adventurous expedition.
The Tademeket Kel Burrum had resolved on his death, and all the
eloquence, all the religious influence of his protector could not soften
their feelings of animosity towards him.
At this crisis, and seeing that a terrible outbreak of hatred and
fanaticism was imminent, El Beckay, in the interests of his friend,
came to a weighty resolution. He told the Tuaregs that neither they
nor he were powerful enough to decide a matter so important as the
fate of Barth, and that El Khotab, head of the great confederation of
the Awellimiden, alone had the right to final judgment.
Leaving the banks of the river, El Beckay then went alone to El
Khotab, and persuaded him to give a safe-conduct to Barth, whom
he looked upon as his own protégé.
Barth never knew the danger he had run. In his book he merely
mentions that El Beckay was away for four days to fetch fresh
camels to take the place of their weary animals, which was of course
a mere pretext on the part of his protector, and is a fresh proof of the
delicate tact and consideration for the doctor shown by the great
Kunta marabout.
Now it so happened, that whilst he was discussing the matter with
the Tademeket, El Beckay was seized with one of his attacks of
prophetic delirium, and prophesied that some day the son of Abdul
Kerim would return with three boats.
We had three boats. I claimed, giving irrefragable proofs, to be the
nephew of Barth; it was impossible to deny that the prophecy was
fulfilled. We must add, to round off the story, that Madidu is the son
of the very El Khotab who saved my “uncle.”